PressProgress Sources

It’s an environmental problem that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to tackle, and successive Alberta governments have lacked the political will to address it.

Hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells exist across the province, many of which are inactive and at risk of abandonment.

For decades the Alberta Energy Regulator has allowed large producers to offload their cleanup obligations onto smaller ones, that then go insolvent or bankrupt.

Alberta’s new Premier has pushed a pilot program called the R-Star that will reward polluters for doing what they’re legally obligated to do anyway by letting them off the hook for billions in royalties owed to the province.

Smith urged the government to adopt R-Star while lobbying for corporate interests last year. It was rejected by Kenney's UCP.  Now, Energy Minister Peter Guthrie said he’ll make it a "top priority."

Researcher and industry watchdog Regan Boychuk joins host Stephen Magusiak to talk about what he calls the R-Star “scam,” and Alberta’s history of regulatory capture by the fossil fuel industry.

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Stephanie Carvin, a Carleton University international affairs professor and a former CSIS intelligence analyst, talks about the failure of police to anticipate the ‘Freedom Convoy,’ and how it was allowed to spiral out of control.

Evidence and testimony show signs of intelligence failure, communication breakdowns, erratic leadership, and an “insurrection from within” Ottawa Police.

While warnings from outside sources went ignored, an OPS unit produced a politically biased and “unprofessional” intelligence report that Carvin says reveals cultural issues within the ranks of the Ottawa Police.

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Climate journalist Geoff Dembicki discusses his latest book The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change.

Drawing from internal oil industry documents spanning decades, The Petroleum Papers examines how major players in the Alberta oilsands suppressed their own research about the climate crisis, and created the playbook to spread climate change denialism in Canada and the US.

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PressProgress is an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on uncovering and unpacking the news through original investigative and explanatory journalism.

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